Catching rotan in winter
But the most amazing ability of rotan is that it comes back to life after being completely frozen and turned into an ice dummy. Having thawed, the rotan becomes again greedy, cheerful and ready to pounce on potential prey. Here I would like to give an example of his amazing vitality and boundless greed. Being on one of the village ponds, I was engaged in catching a medium-sized pike on vents. Live bait was served by small paths caught elsewhere in advance. The pike took quite often, but empty grips were also frequent, when the predator tore off the live bait without falling on the hook. All this was explained by the small size of pond pikes, which were taken on rather large tees of the Volga vents. Then I made special miniature pond vents, especially for such cases.
We catch rotan
The moment came when the live bait ran out, and there was still a lot of time until the end of fishing. The winter day was just warming up. Approaching a local fisherman, he found out that he was catching rotans. After talking with him, I say, they say, I will also catch rotan now, for live bait on a pike. But a local fisherman handed me a piece of fat with meat streaks and explained that there is no better bait for rotan than lard and, in some cases, the meat of rotan itself.
Thanking the fisherman and returning to the vents, I drilled a couple of holes closer to the shore and started fishing with lard. The bites began almost immediately, and soon a sufficient number of live bait splashed in the canal. It is clear that the paths were live bait of a higher order, but there was a glimmer of hope that the predator would also take on rotan.
Having planted several pieces of the smallest rotans on the tees of the vents, I return to catching rotans. There are already a lot of live bait and I just throw the next caught fish on the ice. At home, they will go into excellent cutlets, similar in color and taste to pike. And when the lard ran out, I decided to follow the advice of a local fisherman and check rotan meat as bait. Having cut out a small triangle from the back of a fish glazed in the cold, I put a piece on the hook of the mormyshka. Here! - knocked on the hand. Hooking! .. And already a larger rotan jumped at the hole. Trying to put it aside, I touch a few frozen fish lying close to the hole with a shoe cover. And they fall into the water. Okay, three pieces more, three - less ...
When I was about to leave home with the first gusts of the evening wind, a bite followed, and a rotan clogged in my hand ... with a carved triangle on the back ... It’s necessary: to thaw in the water, come to your senses and again rush to the bait, maybe even from of their meat... Among those fish that fell into the hole was this rotan with a mark on its back...
Successful catch of rotan in winter
The largest rotans usually come across in winter on a lure. But naked bait is not suitable, as in modern fishing for pike perch and bersh, which are now spoiled. Fat, chicken offal, pieces of lung, sprat and the meat of the rotan itself are planted on the hook of the spinner. Anyone who has kept worms since autumn successfully catches rattan on worm tassels. The lure technique is more like the game of bottom baubles. More pushes to the bottom, swarming on a muddy pillow and rotan will be interested in the raised dregs, and there it will grab the bait. But sometimes he reacts to the game with a lure, as in catching a perch. That is, the bait actively plays in the bottom layer. On mormyshka with bloodworms, small specimens often come across, but on various non-attached "devils" and "witches", but with bloodworm bait, quite large rotans also come across. Apparently, this is due to the large size and strange shape of these non-rewinders, which stimulate the appetite and excitement of rotans.
